Out of pure obsessive-compulsiveness:
In the top five* categories: 15 unique films nominated, of which I have seen 2. (I suck.)
In all categories: 45 full-length films nominated, of which I have seen 5.
In my own defense, I saw several films this year that might have been nominated but were not.
Sigh.
*Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress, and Best Supporting Actor/Actress
Here’s some quick thoughts on the nominations, announced this morning.
Absences that make me sad: No Best Director for Altman, his last chance and let’s face it, I’d think dying would give him an edge. No nomination for DiCaprio for The Departed. I haven’t seen Blood Diamond, and I don’t want to, so kind of I’d prefer he got it for the movie I loved him in. No nomination for Matt Damon for The Departed; he was brilliant.
Nothing for Casino Royale. Nothing. Those fucking snobs. I was sure it would get a nod for Best Song, Best Musical Score, or a technical award. What the fucking fuck? Three song nominations for Dreamgirls and nothing for Casino Royale‘s admittedly so-so song. Yeah, so-so, but better than more than half the songs that have won awards, and way better than the songs that have beaten Bond songs for Oscars in the past.
Inclusions I don’t care for: Mark Wahlberg was strictly one note in The Departed. He was utterly adequate. The Children of Men had a flat, preachy screenplay.
Things I am happy about: Rah cheer for Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy, who richly deserve their nominations. Rah cheer for Forest Whitaker and Meryl Streep, even though I’ve seen neither movie. Rah rah cheer cheer for Al Gore.
Some thoughts on The Departed: Nothing for the major star (DiCaprio) or the real Best Supporting (Nicholson). Even though it has a Best Picture nomination, I feel like the accolades are inadequate and a sign that Marty is going to get screwed again.
The Up Series 9/10
Every seven years, a documentary crew visits the same fourteen people. Seven Up! was made in 1964, when the subjects were seven years old.
Over the course of the past four weeks or so, I’ve seen most of this series, starting with Seven Up! and 7 Plus Seven, and then 21 Up, 28 Up, and 35 Up.*
The brilliance of the Up Series is that the premise is so startlingly good that even when the filming falters, it’s still compelling. Director Michael Apted’s questions are sometimes lame, sometimes too leading, sometimes too ordinary, and occasionally offensive. Yet the opportunity to visit with these people every seven years (or every couple of days, in my case) has kept me transfixed. The strongest episode so far has been 28 Up. With 7, 14, and 21 you see people growing up. They are at various points of self-discovery and self-knowledge. Some have known themselves with absolute clarity since they were first filmed. Some, at 21, still have no clue as to who they are. But at 28, they are solidly adult, and each, to the extent of his or her abilities, has arrived. The juxtaposition is so wonderful to watch. By 35, there are fewer changes (which is to be expected) and the film drags, as too much time is spent rehashing. There are more clips from previous episodes than new footage. In addition, three people are missing. For one, there’s a brief explanation (‘Charles doesn’t want to be in this movie’). But Peter and Symon have simply disappeared with nary a comment. Were they unfindable? Dead? I looked them up on Wikipedia because I was so bothered (apparently, they come back for 42 Up). Bad direction, if you ask me, to just omit them.
Despite the fact that the premise of the documentaries is to say something about the British class system and educational opportunities, what we’re watching is something larger, something like the human condition. It’s the smallness and ordinariness that makes it somehow so large.
I guess everyone who watches is going to have favorites. John has annoyed me since he was seven and at thirty-five, even as he is sharing his urgent interest in charity, I am still annoyed. Tony, if the various Internet commentaries are to be believed, is everyone’s favorite. A happy-go-lucky guy who embraces life, he is perhaps the most consistent of the fourteen, recognizably the same person all the way through. I am also very fond of Nick, who at seven, a small boy on a Yorkshire farm and the only child his age in his entire village, expressed an interest in studying science. By twenty-eight (and thirty-five) he is a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin.
And there is the tragedy of Neil, a middle class suburban Liverpool boy who, somewhere around the age of sixteen, became mentally ill and has been, since twenty-one, intermittently homeless and living on the dole. Yet he is there every seven years to share openly about his life.
*I have 42 Up and 49 Up (made in 2006) up next on my Netflix.
In watching the Golden Globes on Monday, I was briefly torn over the nomination for Best Actor in a Television Drama. Hugh Laurie and Patrick Dempsey are two of the best actors on TV, and star in my two favorite shows. But Hugh Laurie’s acceptance speech was so delightful and witty that it smoothed all inner conflict.
And all I can say is, I cannot wait until I have the opportunity to compliment someone by telling them
They smell of fresh mown grass.
I do hope I remember to use the British accent when I say “grass.”
Okay, part one was negative, and got a surprisingly strong reaction. You must have noticed, though, that despite my negativity, I’m watching the thing.
The phrase that comes to mind for me when enjoying What Not to Wear is “it takes a village.”
It is not news that we live in an increasingly isolated culture. Extended families have given way to nuclear families. Americans socialize in local groups less and less. We have less dependency on social networks like church groups, fraternal organizations, scouting, and on and on. All of these things—family, church, clubs—constituted the “village” that allowed us to be nurtured in diverse ways.
Suppose you grew up in the 1930s and Mom didn’t know how to cook. You could still learn how to cook from Grandma or Auntie or from your next-door neighbor. But now Grandma and Auntie don’t live with you and you probably don’t even know your next-door neighbor. So if Mom and Dad can’t cook, you can’t cook. Or, you watch Rachael Ray.
So with What Not to Wear, you’re learning things you might have learned from your extended network, if people still had those. And in a way, it’s disheartening, that people walk through life clueless, without a lot of the basic information they should have, and it takes a TV show to straighten them out.
Now, I am definitely a person that has picked up information slowly and been clueless about things. So I have plenty to learn in life that I might have or should have or didn’t learn from a “village.” So this show, and shows like it, are surely helpful and interesting. Plus, shopping, colors, sarcasm—all fun. I like the show in those ways. But it does seem like WNtW fills a gap that shouldn’t need filling, rather than merely being entertaining or generally educational.
The Illusionist (2006) 7/10Eisenheim the Illusionist (Ed Norton) was once a young peasant named Edward in turn-of-the-century Vienna. A chance meeting with a young Duchess (Jessica Biel) was the beginning of a forbidden childhood friendship. Torn apart as children, they meet again as adults when Eisenheim performs his illusions before the Duchess’s fiancé, Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). Now the Prince has the Chief Inspector (Paul Giamatti) investigating Eisenheim for reasons unknown.
The Illusionist is one of those films bound to disappoint because it staggers under the weight of its own buzz. It’s a good movie; a bit slow, a bit clunky, a bit self-important, but lovely to look at and with yet another bravura Norton performance. Giamatti is also receiving much praise for a performance that reminds me of Keifer Sutherland’s bizarre turn in Dark City.
The buzz would have you believe that the illusions of the title are all a metaphor for life. Or love. Or something. But actually, they’re just stage trickery. The film’s intention appears to be to integrate the illusion of films themselves with the illusion of audience hopes with the illusions created on stage. But this is pretty ambitious, and it doesn’t quite get there.
When people ask me what I thought of The Illusionist, I generally start with “Ed Norton was amazing” and the reaction is generally “Yeah, so?” Ed Norton has already had a career of such virtuosity that one shrugs off the brilliant performance and asks about the movie. Yet, in the months since I’ve seen the film, Norton’s performance haunts me. I’ve just about forgotten Sewell’s unforgiveable scene-chewing, and Biel’s merely adequate effort, but I can close my eyes and see the sorrow and anger in Norton’s eyes like I’m sitting in the theater. I’m inclined to say it’s worth seeing the film for the performance.
I should also add that Arthur loved the movie. Being sixteen, he’s a less jaded viewer than I, but he’s not an uncritical one. He views films fairly thoughtfully and I respect his opinion.
Over the holidays, I watched a What Not to Wear marathon. While the show is totally addictive, the functioning part of my brain had mixed reactions. I’ll get into the negative today and later address the positive.
Makeover shows sell a promise of personal transformation. They are all product placement shows (sometimes more obviously than others), and they are all interested in telling you to buy, buy, buy. A bald message of consumerism works—QVC is popular, and plenty of people sit around watching infomercials as if they were real talk shows. But makeover shows tell you that it’s not consumerism, it’s self-improvement.
I watch these people—the makeover recipients—talk about how they’re changing themselves, how they feel more confident, how changing the outside works to change the inside. I watch the stylists teach people who hate their bodies to dress in a way that accentuates their bodies’ beauty, and show them how wonderful their bodies can be. And all of this is so very, very persuasive.
And yet. » Read more..
The Cooler (2003) 9/10
Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is a “cooler;” a guy who “cools off” a table in a casino when the gamblers are winning too much. According to casino manager Shelly (Alec Baldwin), Bernie is the biggest loser who ever was; “Kryptonite on a stick.” But when Bernie meets Natalie (Maria Bello) his luck starts to change, and Shelly isn’t too pleased.
I fell in love with The Cooler fairly early on, and when it started to fumble in the final reel, I stuck with it. This movie is so wonderful, so lyrical, that I kept forgiving odd moments, small cliches, and failures of logic.
The most extraordinary part of the film is certainly Macy’s performance. As Bernie, Macy makes being a loser a kind of poetry; Bernie is tender, sad, careful, angry, cynical, and hopeful, all in a delicate and graceful arc. Yeah, sure, Baldwin is the one with the big nomination, but for my money, this movie is all Macy’s.
When Bernie meets Natalie, at first she ignores him, and that’s fine with him. He’s a loser, what else can he expect? When she shows interest in him, he’s so surprised he tells her he can’t afford to pay for her; he assumes that’s the only reason anyone would want him. He’s well into making love to her before he’s sure that she really does want to be there.
The Cooler has a theory about luck and having an open heart; that being a loser is about how you feel and who you choose to be, and it’s all so lovely that you hesitate to notice that it’s also stupid. Because the movie shows you things that are stupid; if our basic goodness and joyfulness created good luck, well then, life would be much more predictable than it is. Yet the movie haunted me, its insane implausibility seemed incongruous, but I wanted to embrace it anyway, and then I realized…
The Cooler is a fairy tale.
Rebecca (1940) 10/10
A nervous young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and marries well-known and wealthy Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). As”the second Mrs. de Winter” at Manderley, she finds the memories of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca, omnipresent and intimidating. Most disturbing is the strange housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who seems obsessed with Rebecca. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Rebecca is an exquisite mood piece, and does a remarkable job of keeping the viewer riveted for more than two hours. I had the pleasure of re-watching it this week with two teens who’d never seen it before. I first saw Rebecca in a high school film class (it took three days). Even knowing how thrilled and fascinated we all were in class back then, I was still wondering if these teens would really like it. I was suddenly conscious of the slowness of some of the pacing, of how little actually happens, and I was painfully aware that teens today get a lot more stimulation and are accustomed to a lot more visual movement. I am pleased to report that they both loved it.
The movie is masterful at establishing presence and creating images in the mind’s eye. I am captivated by all the half-women in this film. The second Mrs. de Winter, who is never named, Rebecca, who is never seen, Mrs. Danvers, who is deranged. It would be easy to dismiss all this as Hitchcockian misogyny, but that would be a mistake. True, women don’t fare well in this film, as you’d expect from Hitchcock, they are too meek or too bold, and their sexuality is either perverse or comical. But this is a movie all about women, about their energy and their need for place, about their longings and their sins. The men (Olivier, George Sanders as Rebecca’s cousin, Nigel Bruce as de Winter’s brother-in-law) are there merely as foils for the women to engage in perversion or self-discovery.
(Spoilers below the fold)
» Read more..
Runaway Bride (1999) 4/10
Out of ideas, columnist Ike Graham (Richard Gere) uses a story he hears from a drunk in a bar—about a woman who repeatedly leaves men at the altar—as the basis for his USA Today column. The woman, Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts), humiliated upon reading about herself, writes a scathing letter to the editor which gets Ike fired. Seeking “vindication,” Ike comes to Maggie’s small town to write about her.
Runaway Bride is a vile movie, and watching it is some kind of Christmas punishment for goofing off in front of the TV and watching whatever crap TNT throws at me. Ike Graham is a nasty, misogynist guy. In the opening scene it’s established that, since a deadline is looming, everyone expects him to write yet another column condemning women as evil bitches who are out to get him. The story he hears about Maggie fits the agenda he already had.
This is ugly stuff, and I wondered how the film would handle it. There’s the faintest whiff of feminist sensibility in the opening, as women will have none of his bullshit, and his only friends appear to be his ex-wife (Rita Wilson) and her husband (Hector Elizondo). It’s pretty harsh if your only friend is your ex-wife; it kind of says “I can befriend you only if I first get away from you.” So to open with “you are hateful to women” and then have him get called on it, it seemed like maybe they were going to deal with, y’know, hating women, and maybe that was why I kept watching.
Except they don’t deal with it. » Read more..
